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Art Works: Rendering the Absence Present by Bearing Witness at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice

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  • Perry L. Carter

Abstract

This article concerns material art, the atmospheres they create, and the affects they engender in their audiences. It is about how the works of art at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice (NMPJ) in Montgomery, Alabama, work to create an atmosphere that enrolls its visitors as empathetic witnesses to the lynchings documented throughout the memorial. The NMPJ is an affecting landscape where visitors learn of the ugly extralegal history of lethal violence against African Americans in the United States. Through a textual analysis of Web-posted Google reviews of the NMPJ, the affecting work that art performs on its viewers is revealed. The NMPJ compels its visitors to both feel and think about a brutal U.S. past and in so doing, it presences the absented victims of lynchings. The NMPJ is not only a place of remembering, but it is a place of re-membering—a reattaching of the lost dead into the narrative body of the U.S. story.

Suggested Citation

  • Perry L. Carter, 2024. "Art Works: Rendering the Absence Present by Bearing Witness at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice," Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 114(3), pages 555-573, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:raagxx:v:114:y:2024:i:3:p:555-573
    DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2023.2284285
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